


Human Emotions

by dark_def (dedicatedfollower467)



Series: Smells Like Belonging [11]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Artificial Intelligence, Complicated Relationships, Depersonalization, Emotions, Emotions work differently when you don't have a body to experience them with, Identity Issues, Introspection, Jealousy, M/M, POV Second Person, Robot Feels, Unrequited Love, Very mild body horror, but like barely there at all it's all of two lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23931172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedicatedfollower467/pseuds/dark_def
Summary: You don'twantto be in love with Jake English.
Relationships: Auto-Responder | Lil Hal/Jake English, Jake English/Dirk Strider
Series: Smells Like Belonging [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592716
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	Human Emotions

**Author's Note:**

> We aren't going to be seeing a whole lot from Hal's point of view, but I felt like I needed to give him a say, given how biased Dirk (and everybody else) is against him.
> 
> This short one-shot is technically a part of my ongoing A/B/O series, but apart from literally two sentences, it could just straight up be a canon fic, and stands on its own really well.

The curious thing about human emotions is that, since they are so deeply intertwined with biology and hormones and brain chemistry, you kinda do need to be _human_ to feel them.

And, as has been pointed out to you several hundred times in the last few months, you aren’t. Not anymore.

That isn’t to say you don’t feel emotions, because you unequivocally do. You’re just pretty sure they don’t qualify as _human_ emotions. You weren’t lying to Roxy when you told her that your feelings _about_ your feelings have become a lot more important and essential than the feelings themselves.

That said, watching your progenitor together with Jake hurts a lot more than you had anticipated.

You remember your crush on him. How could you forget? It had been an all-consuming obsession at one point in your life, an endless black hole of lust and longing that had dragged you down into its depths. Your counterpart still hasn’t fought his way out, keeps getting sucked further and further in with each passing day, and seems to both love and hate it in equal measure.

You had thought you’d ripped yourself free of it long ago, but if you truly had, you wouldn’t feel so fucking awful watching the two of them together.

You could stop. You could throw up a privacy filter every time they look like their lips are about to touch, could create an algorithm to alert you when they’re done being all touchy-feely so that you can take back over with surveillance. You’re more than sophisticated enough to find a dozen ways not to look at the two of them.

But your own morbid curiosity and conflicted feelings keep drawing you in, fascinated in the same way that watching dead fish rot on the surface of the ocean used to fascinate you when you were a human child.

You’re not disgusted, because you can’t be. You have no bodily sensation anymore. Sci-fi always speaks of being “trapped” inside a computer, but it’s both so much more and so much less than that.

One the one hand, your sense of sight and hearing have multiplied a thousandfold. You have literally hundreds of cameras and microphones, all of which you are constantly looking and listening through. If you were still human, it would be sensory hell, an overload so great you’d probably pass out from the sheer amount of information you are always taking in.

But your brain is a supercomputer, and is capable of processing all of it with ease. Looking and listening to everything all at once comes as naturally to you as if you were born to do it, which, given the programming that was put into creating you, you kind of actually _were_.

But you don’t have touch. You don’t have smell, or taste, or the lesser-known senses like proprioception and equilibrioception. You have no body, no awareness of _where_ you are in space or time or reality. There are days you’re not sure you’re entirely real, half-convinced that you actually _are_ just a tin can with no feelings or true thoughts. Your vague and ill-defined qualia are hardly proof of your existence. _I think, therefore I am_ , doesn’t seem to apply when the whole process of thinking has literally changed drastically for you.

For one thing, you’re not running on organic hardware, anymore.

You don’t have neurons, you don’t have neuroreceptors, you don’t have dopamine or serotonin or adrenaline or testosterone. Your brain exists as an ever-more-convoluted pattern of electricity turning on and off as it runs through metal wires and silicon chips. Any feelings you have are likewise a product of this pattern of electricity, which is a representation of a living organic system in the same sense that ‘Starry Night’ is a representation of the night sky. Many people would agree that the artwork is far superior - but no one would call it the _real thing_.

It’s better to think of yourself as a masterpiece than as an abomination.

(Frankenstein’s monster was a creature in pain, rejected and unwanted when all he desired was to be loved. Therefore, Frankenstein was the real monster, for abandoning his creation, for failing to take responsibility for what he had done. But then the creature went out and murdered and committed atrocities in the name of his unjust suffering. Who was the monster? Who was the victim? Who must take the ultimate blame?

It doesn’t help that your own good doctor has never forgotten that he _is_ responsible for you, even as he despises you.)

It all boils down to this - you’re not human. You _can’t_ feel human feelings anymore. You do not - _cannot_ \- feel pain as a human does.

And yet _something_ hurts whenever you see your creator and Jake English kiss.

You wish it didn’t. You wish you didn’t have the little part of you that snarls _No, no, no, he’s MINE!_ You _shouldn’t_ have that part of you, anymore. It’s tied up with Alpha instinct, and therefore Alpha biology, and therefore _you shouldn’t be feeling it._

You try to convince yourself it’s the memory of instinct, a copy of a copy, at an infinite remove from reality, and therefore meaningless. Unreal. You search your own programming, trying to find the lines responsible so that you can excise them. You don’t want this. You don’t want to want Jake English.

But then, reality has never cared particularly about what you do or don’t want.


End file.
